XKCD - disaster movie

Source - link

See, it's funny because scientists aren't the big, buff heroes often portrayed in disaster movies as being the people on the front lines leaping into the burning building, driving their trucks at the edge of the tornadoes, cruising around the island saving people from raptors, leaping lava rivers to save their damsel in distress.

Instead, scientists would be more likely to be looking to update their data about the world as the disaster happens. In fact, as explainxkcd explains (natch)...

The situation described (scrambling to update geographical datasets in the advent of natural disaster) is actually a common occurrence these days. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team's Disaster Response unit does almost exactly this: When there is a natural disaster in a location that lacks high quality GIS data (common in much of the developing world), a team of volunteers across the world mobilises to update and improve OpenStreetMap. They use the latest available satellite imagery, usually donated free for the purpose. Disaster response teams then use the GIS data in OpenStreetMap to create maps and plan their response.

Inside the 23-Dimensional World of Your Car's Paint Job

We're continuing this week with a little more on the art theme. It's a very different kind of art from last week's memory metal flower, but there are still pedals involved. (groan)

Wired magazine has a brilliant article detailing the incredible process of color matching the paint on a repaired part of a car to the paint on the rest of the car. At first blush, the process seems awfully simple - pick up a can of the paint used to paint the car originally. Things are a little more complicated than that, however, as no repair shop is going to stock 50,000-60,000 different paints (the number of car colors on the road according to the article), no car in need of repair looks exactly like it did when it first rolled off the production line. and because the original paint job on most cars involves twenty three different dimensions to the color - sparkles, coarseness, red, blue, green, angle, diffuse coarseness, and so on.

The knowledge and skills involved in color matching are absolutely mind-boggling. There's an art to it all.

Aluminum recycling - How it works by Norsk Hydro

We have to recycle more.

There are many countries that are far, far better at recycling than is the US, but we (the US) have to get better.

I hadn't thought about the challenge of not just sorting the majority metals (steel from aluminum from copper from etc) but rather sorting the various similar metal alloys out from each other. The use of x-ray spectroscopy to do that is an application that I would never have considered, and the puff of air used to fire away the unacceptable aluminum alloy chips is amazingly fast.

It's amazing to me how technologically advanced the recycling industry is becoming.

Spinning Sphere of Molten Sodium

I know they're not doing this experiment - "12.5 tons of hot, liquid metal designed to spin at up to four revolutions per second" - because of any chemistry questions. Rather they're trying to explore the creation of the Earth's magnetic field.

But because they're using molten sodium, there are some fascinating chemical reactions that they need to avoid.

So they don't have a normal, water-based sprinkler system to avoid 'modestly catastrophic" because water on sodium, to quote Mr Mackey, 'it's bad, mkay'.

What is the NEW Silver Play Button REALLY made of?!

The video description doesn't remotely need that ?! at the end.

That being said, the process that the youtubers here go through to find out what specific elements are in the 'silver' play button is fascinating. The (?) Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectrometer is something that's new to me.

I'm particularly fascinated by the results at 5:39 showing the elemental makeup at various depths of the 'button.'

Yeah, all that's interesting, but what's the 'gold' play button award made of?

We produce 13 tons of hazardous waste every second

We are horrible to the planet.

And we have to be better.

Otherwise we're going to continue to poison the only environment that we have.

Luckily this Vox video doesn't dwell only on the negative. Instead, they look at what a small startup, Smarter Sorting, is doing to decrease the number of hazardous materials that end up in the waste stream - that aren't incinerated or landfilled.

I'm hopeful that this program expands soon.

Solomon the Unwise

See, it's funny because when King Solomon is known for his decision when two women came to him both claiming to be the mother of the same baby. Solomon suggested that the baby be cut in half with each woman getting half the baby. One mother thought this a fair decision, and the other woman begged for the child not to be cut in half. She was willing to relinquish her claim rather than let the baby die. Solomon then announced that the woman relinquishing her claim must be the real mother because she cared more for the baby's life than for her claim.

In the case of the comic, the two women both claim that be the owners of the atom. King Solomon apparently proposed the splitting of the atom.

Nuclear fission - splitting the atom - releases a massive amount of energy, hence the mushroom cloud.

Source - C-section comics

And there's a bonus panel...